DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. IV, No. 42. JUNE 1923. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A., 2^ Westminster 

 Mansions, Great Smith Street, London, S.W.i, to whom 

 all Editorial Communications should be addressed. (Dr. 

 A. S. Russell continues to act as Scientific Adviser.) 



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 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

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Editorial Notes 



" After many summers dies the swan," sighed 

 Tithonus, weary of immortality. The heroes of old 

 myths, from the Wandering Jew down — shall we say ? 

 — to Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed, found relief 

 from humanity's last duty, that of dying, a gift of 

 the Danaids, a fatal gift. Doubtless the myth of the 

 lover of the dawn, growing eternally old, expresses 

 that divine human power of acquiescence in the 

 inevitable and of appreciating its excellences which 

 makes cruel men whisper "Sour grapes." Man alone, 

 say philosophers, has foreknowledge of death, though 

 the big-game hunter believes in an intuition of 

 mortality which makes the elephants foregather in 

 lonely places when their hour has struck. But in fact 

 it would seem that, though we all admit ourselves 

 mortal, we are really gloriously incredulous about it. 

 Nothing overwhelms our hearts with such devastating 

 gloom as a scientist's prophecy that this world of ours 

 has only another million years to last. Motor accidents 

 we may laugh at ; the ills which the flesh is heir to we 

 may forget ; but to hear that, inevitably, in one 

 million years we will be frozen stiff or burnt out, as 

 our authority of the moment teaches, is appalling 

 news. No man can love his infinitely unborn grand- 

 children so much as to let their fate sadden him. We 

 do not shudder at the tragic chillness of our forebears 



when the Ice Age came upon them. It is ourselves we 



would weep for, when we read, as in H. G. Wells's 



wonderful book The Time Machine, of a picture of 



the last living creature, all but lifeless in the frozen 



tropics. 



***** 



This distaste of wholesale extinction, remote or 

 imminent, has often received national and even world- 

 wide expression. In the year 1000, it is said, pilgrims 

 travelled like a devastating army to Jerusalem, there 

 to await the inevitable end of the world. " A thunder- 

 storm sent them all upon their knees in mid-march." 

 Many times the return of comets has been the occasion 

 for prophecies of universal extinction. In the year 

 1524, on the 1st of February, according to the astro- 

 logers, the Thames was to rise and wash away ten 

 thousand London houses. The prior of St. Bartholo- 

 mew's built a species of Noah's Ark to save himself 

 and his household. Yet " Sweete Themmes ranne 

 softly " that fatal day, as any other. Our astrologers 

 — forgetful of the signs of the Zodiac, yet true to their 

 traditional task of foretelling destruction — concentrate 

 to-day on the eventual extinction of our sun. It is a 

 commonplace that from it we draw all our means of 

 existence, to it we owe our life. If we exclude some 

 dislocation of celestial traffic, and a collision of our 

 planet in mid-space, when we should all become extinct 

 in the momentary glory of a new star, it is to the 

 sun that we must turn our anxious eyes, when we 

 are struck with the fear of a threat to our immortality. 

 Of course, now and again other difficulties, due in a 

 sense to our insufficient use of the stni, confront us. 

 Professor A. H. Gibson, in his little book Natural 

 Sources of Energy, has discussed some of them. The 

 world's coal supplies, for example, may not last more 

 than 350 years. The whole world's oil supply will 

 last us 500 years ; and the only other important 

 source of stored-up energy, radium, will scarcely help 

 us on our Tithonus-search of immortality. When we 

 are approaching our five-hundredth year, doubtless we 

 will turn our minds to the use of wind power, water 

 power, tidal power, and direct sun energy to work 

 our world. If, in point of fact, we ever do solve the 

 problem of greatly prolonging the average life of man, 

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